


bad people don't live in our house

by dustorange



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Dick Grayson is Robin, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I never ever get to use the fluff tags for stuff i'm SO EXCITED AHH, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28614216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustorange/pseuds/dustorange
Summary: Bruce stirred when the bed beside him dipped, and the sheets across his chest were yanked hard.“What,” Bruce said roughly. A small hand smacked against his face.“Shh,” said a little voice. The sheets pulled again. “Go back to sleep.”
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 30
Kudos: 358





	bad people don't live in our house

Bruce stirred when the bed beside him dipped, and the sheets across his chest were yanked hard. 

“What,” Bruce said roughly. A small hand smacked against his face. 

“Shh,” said a little voice. The sheets pulled again. “Go back to sleep.”

Bruce stared through the darkness up at the ceiling. “You —”

“I said go back to sleep,” Dick interrupted, smacking the underside of Bruce’s jaw with the clumsy heel of his palm this time, where there was an incredibly sore bruise. Bruce resolutely did not wince, and just listened to the sound of the sheets shifting as Dick settled in bed next to him and carefully pulled the comforter up, keeping the sheets to himself and a good couple inches between he and Bruce. 

The distance didn’t last long. After another silence filled with loud rustling and restless movement, Dick finally nudged closer to Bruce, winding his little, eight year old arms around Bruce’s bicep. It was only because of the darkness in the room that rendered it invisible that Bruce allowed himself the tiny, only partially exasperated smile that pulled at the muscles in his cheeks. 

“Can I finish what I was going to say,” Bruce said, keeping the unnecessary — overstepping, _unprofessional_ — fondness out of his voice, at least. 

“What did I just say, Bruce? Go to bed. You’re being so loud. I’m trying to sleep over here.” 

“You’re taking all the sheets,” Bruce said. 

“That’s not my problem,” Dick said. They fell back into silence. But then one arm unwound from around Bruce’s and pulled the comforter up to Bruce’s clavicle, gingerly patting his collarbone for good measure. Dick’s voice was very small, unsure. “...Is that better?”

It did absolutely nothing to resolve the theft of the actual sheets. Bruce said, “Much.”

“...Good.” Dick sounded satisfied, a hint of guilt fading even toward the end of the single word, and Bruce felt another rush of affection for this little boy who couldn’t even pretend not to care.

It was a startlingly strong feeling, one that took hold of him like a vulture — sharp, digging talons around long-dead meat — and Bruce wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. 

He knew, in a disconnected, intellectual sort of way, that Dick was not his. Would never, ever be. 

Bruce knew better than most how irreplaceable parents were. That had been an early assurance that Bruce had given Dick. He was not going to try and supplant them, he said, while holding his hand at the funeral as he laid out the offer to come live at the Manor, and Dick had looked up and asked, _What does supplant mean?_

_To usurp,_ Bruce said, and Dick had sniffled, scrubbed a sleeve across his eyes, and Bruce was abruptly reminded that Dick was standing in front of his parents’ gleaming coffins and seeing them aboveground for the last time in his life and, also, suddenly, that an eight year old was probably no more familiar with the word usurp than supplant. _To take the place of,_ he corrected belatedly, now ashamed to have brought it up at all given how vastly inappropriate the setting was. But it _was_ important. It was what Bruce had needed to hear, very badly, many years ago. 

  
Dick belonged to his parents, even if they were no longer there. He always would.

_Oh,_ Dick had said, then, very quietly, leaning against Bruce’s leg, head pressing into the space below Bruce’s bottom rib like he couldn't quite stay upright on his own. He had squeezed Bruce’s hand, or, more exactly, his fingers, which were the only part he was holding, and Bruce had tentatively squeezed back, and the simple _oh_ had sounded grateful. 

It had been a startling display of familiarity for someone who Dick had only spoken to twice before, and Bruce could not discern whether it was simply a matter of Dick’s nature or if no one else in the long space of the days since the fall had shown him any shred of kindness at all. 

In any case, Bruce had given his word, and he would not take it back. He could never compare to John or Mary in any case. Their blood. Their ease. Their grace. The simple, loving, affectionate way Dick talked about them pulling him into their lap or dumping chalk in his hair and picking him up around the middle and not letting him go even when he squirmed. Bruce could never do that. Bruce could never even begin to. 

Dick had surprised him after training, once, with a tight, brief hug before scurrying off upstairs for dinner, and Bruce had had to lay down flat on the training mats to compose himself. A simple act of human contact that wasn’t a squeezed shoulder from Alfred or coy touch from a socialite had knocked the breath out of him and made him panic. 

Bruce’s teeth slid and came down hard on the muscle of his tongue, filling his mouth with the taste of blood. He grimaced. It didn’t matter.   
  


But that didn’t mean the feeling faded. He waited for it to, but it never did. It only kept him awake.

He stayed awake, and that was why Bruce knew that Dick hadn’t fallen asleep either. 

“Nightmare,” Bruce asked, at last, and Dick shifted. Bruce felt Dick’s fingers curl in the material of his shirtsleeve. 

“What’s it to you?” Dick shot back, but the aloof tone he was going for was undercut by the fact that it was given in a quiet mumble and that Dick inched even closer to prop his head on Bruce’s arm.

Bruce paused for a long time.

“I have jurisdiction on nightmares in this house,” Bruce settled on. 

Dick giggled softly. 

Then the quiet returned, magnified somehow by the inky blackness of the room.

Bruce moved the words around in his mouth a few times so they would come out right. “Would you like to Talk About It.”

“You’re not supposed to tell people about bad dreams. They come from the devil.” Dick shifted, pointy chin burying into Bruce’s elbow. Then he paused. “You can talk about good dreams, though.”

“Was...tonight a —”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dick whispered hastily. 

“Alright,” Bruce conceded, falling silent. He stared at the ceiling and felt the warm weight on his arm and did not sleep. 

“Do you have any good dreams?” Dick asked. 

“I don’t have very many dreams.” He paused. “That I remember.”

“I guess you have to go to sleep to have those,” Dick mumbled, and Bruce flicked him on the forehead. Dick slapped his hand away so Bruce did it again for good measure. “Quit it.”

“You quit it.”

Bruce laid his hand over Dick’s face, which it was approximately the size of, and Dick made an affronted noise through his laughter as he tried to pry it off by pushing Bruce’s wrist. Bruce smiled even as the laughter died down. When Dick finally pried it off, he kept his hands wrapped around the wrist, surreptitiously finding Bruce’s pulsepoint as if to reassure himself. Then Bruce heard a little, relieved sigh. 

The grip didn’t loosen for a while after that, until Bruce began to feel Dick’s hands grow slack, breathing evening out into something Bruce had grown to recognize and rely on. To it he matched his own breathing, but unlike Dick, he couldn’t sleep. 

He had other things keeping him awake. 

“Good night, chum,” Bruce whispered to the boy asleep beside him, even though he couldn’t hear. 

  
  



End file.
